AN; this is the first FULL chapter ^^. of course the credit and all that's not mine (aside from the creativity credit and plot credit), and I do hope you don't flame and all that as always, there's no profit of course because if there was any profit I'd probably be writing from jail by now (HAHA!).

Enjoy! R&R

Chapter One: Hardware Upgrade Of Doom.

They'd gone over it dozens if not hundreds of times by then, probably some two or three Earth years had gone by and they were still orbiting the planet inside Zim's space station; going back and forth between the station and the planet for stuff like food, clothes and other quite fun stuff, not water since it could be obtained synthetically using some of the station's dimensional storages.

What other fun stuff? Well the fact that some people reported sightings of the 'missing/possibly dead' professor Membrane was hilarious enough, and going back to the base for a while was good too, it brought back GOOD memories; not everything in their life was artificial gravity and the beautiful view that you can get of Earth from outer space.

With Dib long gone and Gaz doing ok (somehow) on her own, she had been left quite a sum of money and she didn't really bond with Membrane enough to be hurt by his absence; it seemed as if Zim had achieved everything he wanted at that moment, without counting his mission which, with time he'd obviously come to notice was a complete charade, fake, a simulation.

And still, they didn't know what to do with Membrane's body so he could set off into space with Zim, a few modifications had been made to the space station itself, namely protecting it with anti-radiation/anti-particles shields made of silver/titanium alloy permanently and changing its energy source to nuclear fusion (in a level humans couldn't still acchieve, not even with Membrane's years of experimenting), but the question remained, what to do with Membrane's body? It wasn't as if they wanted to live forever in the space station, or to continue forever in the come and go between the planet and the station, Zim wanted to take Membrane far, far away with no one to bother them; the space was huge enough for them to explore, and he just KNEW that the possibility of unlimited space exploration seduced the human to no end, he was a scientist after all.

Upon further analysis of Membrane's body, Zim discovered that he wasn't 100% organic, his CNS was indeed protected from radiation and trauma in general by a neural case (inside his skull not instead) made of an alloy of chromium and titanium, his whole nervous network had been replaced with fibres of a new BSCCO-based, high-temperature superconductor he'd developed himself, however, the rest of his organs (vital and non-vital) had been left without protection.

'Why?', Zim wondered; he thought of the possibilities and he didn't like them very much, on the one hand Membrane's lifespan was limited compared to his own and his body wouldn't be able to take it either without protection, adding to it the fact that he didn't quite know how old the human was but he could estimate; on the other hand he knew that Irk and Vort had technology that could help him enormously with this particular issue, but if he wanted top-notch technology he'd have to go to Meekrob, the Irken Empire's sworn enemy, Meekrob; Vort was only his 2nd option and as he'd said before, it was not only Membrane's mind/brain he wanted...

Turning Membrane into a cyborg was one of the options, and Irk and Vort were good options for this possibility; Irk being his home-planet, of course he wanted to go back and he wanted Membrane to know it just as he knew the Earth (albeit it had not been planned beforehand), however, the view that the Tallest, the control brains, and basically the rest of the Irken military shared of him wasn't very good, more like, disastrous, and it so was his entire faultt. Going back should be difficult, even if he'd been able to just waltz into Irk at least twice without anyone even raising an eyebrow, he didn't want to try.

And Vort was a whole different matter, he knew there was at least one Vortian he could 'count' on, or at least use. But that had been when he had the Irken Empire to somehow support him, now it was different, it would be just a human and him.

And Meekrob was the worst and the best option of all, beings of pure energy with technology that could surpass Membrane's wildest inventions and the finest of Irken engineering together and potentiated (they weren't the only ones unconquerable for nothing). Even if they were the sworn enemies of the Irkens, he might not be part of the 'Empire' anymore, and not even an Invader, but he still was a QUITE proud Irken.

So, in the end, the question remained unanswered (but with possible solutions), what to do with Membrane's body?

AN: soooo, there's really not much difference from the preview but really, don't tell me you were expecting a long chapter after whole months of author's block Oo.

Anything to say? ^^